Circulation Committee Meeting Minutes – September 2019

Missing Items Cleanup

10,000 items that had been marked lost/missing pre-migration were deleted with the assistance of Equinox.
Approximately 80 active items got into the mix that were not meant to. (These items were originally on the missing items list, found and checked in but never removed from the list.) If you find something that does not check-in properly, or remains on the patron’s record after being checked in, investigate and report it to WLS (Allison Pryor).

Repair, Mending or Bindery Cards

These cards will be removed from the system.
To search for these cards, search for patrons within your library. Enter Repair, Bindery or Damaged in the

  • Barcode field
  • First Name field
  • Last Name field

If results display, check in any items found on that card and change the item’s status.

WLS Purge

WLS was not certain if items marked as missing or inactive patrons will be purged after a certain period. WLS is investigating.

Library Use Profiles

All libraries agreed that they would not like cards with a Library Use profiles to accrue fines.

Discussion ensued as to why Library Use profiles are being used for hold shelf items. It is used at some libraries to place a hold for a patron who may not yet have a card. WLS recommended that it is best to issue the patron a temp. card and place the hold on the temp. card. WLS will look at a workflow that keeps in mind the minimization of the number of steps required.

Staff Accounts

Employees often have more than one user account in Evergreen.

  • ● Each employee has an active directory account associated with their name that is used for only login and library transactions (patron checkout, checkin, placing holds, etc.). You can distinguish this account because the active directory firstname.lastname will be in place of the numeric barcode.
    Under no circumstances is anyone permitted to use this account for personal transactions.
  • Employees may also have
    • A personal account at their home library for their personal transactions, usually with an ADULT profile
    • A staff account for work-related transactions with a STAFF profile
  • Adding Profile to your column display will distinguish which is which.
Holds

Do not suspend a hold that is on the hold shelf. Cancel the hold and place a new one.

If the patron needs just a few more days to pick up an item, extend the hold’s Shelf Expire date.

Holds → Actions → Modify Holds Dates → check box in front of Shelf Expire Date →change date

In extreme cases, such as if a patron has a hold on a DVD, checks it out and finds it’s broken, submit a helpdesk request with details and request a move to the top of the queue to get another copy sooner.

If an item is long in transit, go to patron’s Holds > Actions > Find Another Target.
Evergreen will target the next available copy to fill the patron’s hold. The original item remains In Transit until cancelled by staff.

Looking at the In Transit lists is helpful. (Transit List instructions can be found in the Daily Maintenance guide.) For items on the list more than one month, check the shelves for both your library’s and other library’s items.

  • If found, check in and route as needed.
  • If one of your items is not found, mark it Missing and cancel the transit.
Print Receipts

The lag in the printing of slips is resulting in some libraries putting the wrong slip in the wrong book. Double scanning the slip routes the book to the correct location. It was reported that it only occurs if your own copy is going to another library. WLS thought it had been resolved and will investigate further. For now, WLS suggested using the Location column for check-ins.

Pull Holds List

A hold can be retargeted if your copy is pulled and found damaged.

If a copy is not filling a hold, and you know it should, the recommendation is to wait 24 hours and capture the hold again with Retarget Local Holds and Retarget All Statuses modifiers on. Usually, if you wait just one hour, the hold should process. This lag has to do with the timestamp issued when the hold was placed.
Looking at a title’s View Holds tab with the Last Targeting Date/Time column will show you when Evergreen last found a target to fill a hold.
It was asked if retargeting a hold will tell you if another target exists. This was not known.

Acquisitions

WLS has placed a high priority on working on the acquisitions module. 2 out of 3 libraries are up and running. The reason this is important is because acquisitions titles are holdable for all libraries. The hold button may be grayed out because an acquisition library has not ordered or linked the item yet.

MARC records If you notice that two separate bib records exist for an item, please send an email to wls-cat@wlsmail.org. WLS cataloging has to overlay the good record.

Patron Billing

It was asked whether libraries would prefer all items on the patron billing screen to be checked or unchecked by default. It was agreed that they should remain unchecked.

If the Billing History receipt does not display the item title, change the receipt template. WLS will be sending a copy of template in the .json file format to each library.

Receipts on Bill Payment may have been lost in the malware.

One Page for Printing Item Information or Billing Information

It was requested that there be one page that displays the patron information and the item information or one page that display, without changing the receipts for items out or bills history. This can be formatted in the work station’s Print Templates. (Administration > Workstation > Print Templates)

Receipt Printers

If the receipt printer won’t print, shut down and re-login. Otherwise wait as the print driver may be slow to load. (This a VDI side-effect)

Workstation Registration

It is possible that more than one registration has been created for a workstation. If the wrong workstation registration is used, there will be no saved settings. To check if an employee has more than one registered workstation, go to
Administration → Workstation → Registered Workstations → Workstations Registered With This Browser → Drop Down Arrow.

If you receive a message during the log-in process saying “This workstation already exists. Use it anyway?” select “Yes” to retain settings.

Seeing Events and Notifications for Holds

If a patron questions what happened to their hold or claims they were never notified, you can use Triggered Events / Notifications to conduct research.

  • Go to Circulation> patron record > Other >Triggered Events / Notifications

Set Event State to Complete and Core Type to Hold and select Apply
Right click on Column Header to get the Column Picker.

OR

  • Go to Circulation > Item Status > Triggered Events
    Setting the Event Status to Pending or Invalid also produces useful information.
New Helpdesk Platform

Instructions for how to use the Dude Solutions online portal are on the IT Wiki

Up to 3 registered users per library may submit a request.

Please include:

  • A text description of what you were trying to do when you got the error, ESPECIALLY,
    • Item name and barcode ID
    • Patron name and barcode ID
    • Relevant details

During the login process, select Help Desk.

Dude Solutions can be used to track your own requests and requests on behalf of a
coworker.

Circulation Contacts List

Please update circulation contacts when they change.

Evergreen Tips

WLS hopes that the weekly Evergreen Tips have been helpful. If you or your staff has tips/workflows they would like to share, please email them to Allison Midgley and Allison Pryor to have them featured in a weekly posting. Evergreen. Learn More. tips are all available and searchable on the IT Wiki.

Inactive Card Deletion

Inactive cards cannot be deleted.

Open Forum/Reminders

Computer Shut Down: If an employee logs off of Evergreen instead of shutting down the VDI session, the next employee gets a cross between the old and new employees. Libraries should either shut down or do nothing.

If a family member picks up a hold and it is checked out to their card and not to the card that hold was placed under, the library gets no credit for that hold.

As of Monday, you should not see a late item being checked in with no fines generated. If seen, and the due date is after 9/9/19, please create a helpdesk ticket.

When an item is renewed, the checkout date is changed to the renewal date. The original checkout date can be seen in the Circ History List.
In Item Status, Detail view Quick Summary, the Total Circs are the total circs, including the legacy count. Total Circs – Current Year are the circs from this year since we migrated systems. Total Circs – Prev Year will populate next year.

For changes to library hours/or weekly closed dates (i.e. Sundays) please put in a request to the Helpdesk. Several changes must be made by WLS, including the hours listed on the OPAC. To list your library as closed due to holidays or emergency weather closings, continue to use the Closed dates Editor (Administration > Local Administration > Closed Dates Editor).

According to Daily Maintenance in the IT Wiki, access to print notices is available at https://egstaff.westchesterlibraries.org/notices/index.html.
Lost notices are available for 1 month, in keeping with the WLS privacy policy. Please note that link access doesn’t always occur. If this happens, wait 1⁄2 hour and try again. If it still doesn’t work, notify Allison Pryor.

Please note that it is possible to checkout a patron barcode.

Items in Claims Returned ask for the claims returned date. If the due date is chosen, bills are still incurred. Allison Pryor requested examples so that she can investigate.

When checking in a book, it sometimes goes back on the patron record. If this should occur, please send the patron barcode, item name and item barcode to Allison Pryor. This may be an indication that book was a part of the batch deletion of Missing/Lost items.

The search interface and how it is searching is under discussion with Equinox. WLS suggests changing “Contains” to “Starts With”.

WLS requested examples of patrons who can’t have their home libraries changed.

Best practice for removing user accounts: If you need to remove a patron’s account because they moved out of the county/state or are deceased, delete them using a User Bucket. Do NOT Purge patron accounts.

For reports, remember to filter for your library. If using a Shared Report, clone the report first to your own folder.

Storage status hides the item from the catalog and retains the home location.

The directors from Yorktown and Yonkers will be retiring. Congratulations to Pat and Ed!

Next Meeting

The next meeting will be November 14, 2019 in the 4th floor conference room.

Respectfully submitted – Kathy Iglesias – LEW